President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday promising to combat antisemitism on college campuses, through actions including revoking student visas and deporting some international college students involved in pro-Palestinian rallies.
“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump said in a fact sheet on the order. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
This move has sparked widespread backlash from higher education leaders and free speech advocates.
Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, criticized the executive order, dismissing it as a politically motivated attempt to rekindle chaos on campus. She compared it to the McCarthy era, when people reported to federal authorities as protesters or communist sympathizers then faced deportations or visa revocations.
“President Trump continues to use inflammatory rhetoric that is chilling speech and creating a climate of fear and intimidation,” Pasquerella wrote in an email to GBH News. “He wants to ‘investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities,’ but since when is the protection of free speech un-American?”
Michael Brickman, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, strongly disagreed with that characterization.
“That’s utter nonsense,” said Brickman, who worked as a senior advisor in the U.S. Education Department during Trump’s first term. “Enforcing the basic civil rights of students is the opposite of chaos.”
Brickman argued students who engaged in protests that go beyond speech or civil disobedience — such as harassment, vandalism, or action aimed at denying Jewish students an education — should face severe consequences, regardless of their citizenship status.
Brickman also criticized former President Joe Biden’s response to antisemitism, saying that administration employed a “catch-and-release” policy that often resulted in little more than a slap on the wrist.
“Clearly, the Trump administration takes this a lot more seriously and is not going to allow this type of thing to continue,” he said.
Trump’s executive order echoes one of his campaign promises. During a rally in New Jersey last spring, Trump vowed to crack down on international students who engage in antisemitic or anti-American activities, threatening their deportation.
“When I’m president we will not allow our colleges to be taken over by violent radicals. And if you come here from another country and try to bring jihadism or anti-Americanism or antisemitism to our campuses, we will immediately deport you. You’ll be out of that school,” he said on the stump.
The order follows months of pro-Palestinian protests and rallies on U.S. college campuses sparked by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and the Israeli military’s subsequent assault on Gaza. Civil rights groups have documented a surge in hate crimes and incidents targeting Jews, Muslims, Arabs and other people of Middle Eastern descent.
Protests were held at several Boston-area campuses, including MIT, Harvard, Tufts and Northeastern. In one incident at Emerson College, more than 100 people were arrested when police cleared an encampment in a public alleyway.
Trump’s order calls for department leaders to submit recommendations within 60 days on criminal and civil actions that could be taken to combat antisemitism. It also proposes a review of court cases related to alleged civil rights violations stemming from pro-Palestinian campus protests.
Many higher education leaders and legal experts warned the order may violate constitutional free speech rights and predicted legal challenges.
Caroline DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, noted the Trump administration had considered similar actions during his first term but ultimately didn’t act.
“Even the government’s own lawyers at that time concluded that there were significant First Amendment limits,” DeCell said. “To the extent the president means that he plans to deport anybody who participated in what he called pro-jihadist protests, those people would have First Amendment claims to raise.”
And DeCell said the deportation order could be considered unconstitutional.
“For people who are already in the United States, on valid student visas, who may have joined in pro-Palestinian protests, if that’s the basis for the revocation of their student visas, the constitutional limits put forward in the First Amendment would apply,” she said.
Pasquerella also pointed out the ambiguity of the order. For example, she said it is unclear whether rejecting Zionism would make someone a “Hamas sympathizer,” potentially putting a swath of students at risk.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a prominent Muslim advocacy group, said it would consider challenging the order in court.
Many pro-Palestinian protesters, including Jewish students and staff who support a ceasefire, have denied supporting Hamas or engaging in antisemitic acts on campus. They have said they are protesting Israel’s military actions in Gaza, which have claimed more than 47,000 lives, according to health authorities.
Rafi Ash, from Amherst, is a junior at Brown University who participated in pro-Palestinian protests last spring. He said he sees the executive order as a clear violation of free speech and the right to protest on campus.
“It’s harping on the same xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric which we see so much from Trump,” said Ash, who is Jewish. “This is a really boldface attack on civil liberties. It’s a shame that we are being told that this represents any form of antisemitism.”
GBH’s Diane Adame contributed reporting.
